The use of piston engines is well known and spans over a century. Such engines come in various configurations and alignments. However, all such engines have a common feature of alternating pistons that are connected to a rotating crankshaft. The rotation of the crankshaft produces rotational power that is later translated through a series of gears, usually referred to as a transmission device, to the wheels or other moving parts of a machine that is using such a motor as a source of power.
All existing embodiments are suffering from a common shortcoming in that the rotation of the crankshaft necessarily contains dead zones, or zones of now power, where the rotational force of the piston is wasted until the crankshaft turns over into a force producing position. The present invention aims to eliminate and solve this problem by connecting pistons to a gear rack that is always moving linearly, thereby not wasting any cycles on rotation. While the present invention also contains a crankshaft like device, it is used only for the initial startup, to eliminate vibration and to prevent the cylinder head from slamming into the cylinder chamber.
Furthermore, it will be shown that the device embodied in the present invention has a plurality of different applications, such as a water propulsion engine. The reciprocating gear rack of the present invention can be retrofitted using a conventional piston on one and another piston on the other end or to a water piston of the water propulsion device.
Various implements are known in the art, but fail to address all of the problems solved by the invention described herein. One embodiment of this invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawings and will be described in more detail herein below.